Chicago Mercantile Exchange's profit jumps 42%

GregMorcroft

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The Chicago Mercantile Exchange said Tuesday record volumes in commodities and financial derivatives and a continuing surge in electronic trading all converged to lift first quarter profit 42%.

The company
CME, -0.96%
said it earned $130 million, or $3.69 a share, compared to $91.4 million, or $2.61 a share in the year-ago quarter.

Average daily volume reached a record 6.5 million contracts, up 30%, and it benefited from record processing volumes for the Chicago Board of Trade and the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The company, which is trying to acquire rival CBOT Holdings and outmaneuver an unsolicited bid by the rival Intercontinental Exchange, said it set volume records in all its products lines in the quarter and posted the best top-line, quarter-over-quarter growth since 2004.

The exchange said energy volume traded on the CME Globex platform for NYMEX surged to a record 584,000 contracts per day during the first quarter, the highest quarterly electronic energy volume ever traded on any exchange.

Clearing and transaction fees at the CME rose 29 percent to $258 million, up from $201 million for first-quarter 2006, driven by quarterly volume records across all product lines, the firm said.

Record volume also resulted in all time high revenue from processing services, which rose 92% to $35 million. Quotation data fees were up 24 percent to $25 million.

Total expenses rose 17% to $132 million, driven by increased compensation, technology related and marketing expenses, the firm added in a press release.

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